Drunken Angels in America...

ByRalphael Prepetit

A Few Minutes with an Angel. Looking out for people is hard work but my job is to make it look easy. I am a Guardian Angel. My people or as we refer to them, ‘assignments,’ can run anywhere from a few seconds to 70 or more decades. Time that can translate to an eternity if my assignment spends their entire life never even believing that I exist. The more talented of us often have more than one assignment at a time. The exact numbers are something that I can't be exactly sure of, but in either case, every human being gets at least one. We are hidden in plain sight, lined within the fabric of each emotionally specific feeling. At times I can be heavy, and relentlessness, but there is only so much room in the soul, and some of us weigh quite a bit. Especially when given a lifetime of rich emotion to ingest. Yes, it’s true that some of our assignments drive us to drink. It is also true that some of us have been known to drop an assignment if they have been guilty of any transgression that involves children as a victim for any reason whatsoever.

So, what does a Guardian Angel do exactly? I allow a person’s mind the beauty of waters that rise to the level of an Antarctic glacier, and their thoughts are often consumed with the feeling that takes one’s breath away. It is in that moment that I occasionally introduce a cameo from my boss, just out of the corner of their eye, an airplane window with God looking out of it, flying by quickly. Often he just winks at them through a beam of western sunlight, as if to say 'I notice you.’ They might not know that it was my gift, but that doesn’t matter too much. It’s the feeling that changes lives. Credit not deemed necessary.

I think many people would be surprised to know that we swear. God doesn’t necessarily approve of this practice, but as long as we don’t use his name, he mostly looks the other way. However, with the amount of self inflicted destruction and/or obstruction that people exhibit, swearing is inevitable.

One of the greatest sources of humor for me personally is to witness my assignment transform from a ‘punk’ to a ‘parent’ which can happen at any time in early to mid-adult life. It is not uncommon that this realization might occur on a random Tuesday in late May. The Déjà Vu moment of the uttering of a phrase that their mother had said to them when they were thirteen years old, then watching them as they repeat it verbatim to their precocious eight year old. The common problem that most people have with opening ketchup packets is also quite humorous, as well as those people who attempt to cure a bad day by dancing around their homes half naked, while listening to ‘Little Red Corvette’ by Prince, and eating ‘Dulce De Leche’ ice cream with a small soup spoon. The people who wait for the traffic light to change before crossing, while standing at a crosswalk with no one in sight for miles. The people whose various idiosyncrasies while using the bathroom border on obsessive-compulsive. Witnessing the way some people change their voice and speech patterns depending on whom they are speaking with on the phone. Those who proudly pronounce their strict diet in public, yet find themselves binge eating ‘Velvetta Mac and Cheese’ in private. The way some couples have routinely mechanical, and uninteresting sex. All of these things we find quite funny. We Angels live a voyeuristic existence, and I’d be lying if I told you that it was always a walk in the park. With only about half of our assignments even acknowledging, and/or willing to acknowledge our existence, often times it’s very similar to screaming at the characters in a movie theatre, knowing full well that they can’t hear you. Part of the human condition is that the truth often hurts, so then lies become their analgesic. I find it interesting how people are always trying to reconcile where they are on the map of life that they first starting drawing at age twelve, and find it strange that their geography wasn’t exactly precise.

There is danger in people demanding too much from themselves, but it’s far more dangerous still to demand too little. For the sake of self interest, I would advise people to open their minds to possibility. Look and listen for the signs that we place all around them. Sometimes that nagging feeling in the pit of their stomachs, and sometimes the sound of the New York Philharmonic performing the ‘Nutcracker’ dancing around in their heads. We spend a lot of time in these places.

I’ve got to get back to my assignment now, so I’m afraid I must cut short our little chat. But before I go, I would like you, the reader, to remind people to pay attention, look for the signs, remember that they are not alone, and that they all have an Angel in their corner. An Angel who is always around, though occasionally prone to goofing off. Tell them that sometimes they can see us if they gaze really hard at a heavy evening rain in the summertime. We are the true objects of the imagination dancing in between the raindrops.